Kanal (1957) on Netflix
September 1944, late in the Warsaw Uprising. Lieutenant Zadra commands a band of resistance fighters and civilians trapped in the ruins of Mokotów. The order comes to leave through the sewers.
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- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb7.9/109,001 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Plot summary
In the ruins of the isolated Mokotów district, Lieutenant Zadra leads what remains of a Polish Home Army company and the civilians sheltering with them, forty-three people in all, on the fifty-sixth day of the Warsaw Uprising. The composer Michał reaches his wife by telephone in another part of the city and hears that the Germans are clearing the building she is in. The next morning Warrant Officer Korab finds Lieutenant Mądry, the second-in-command, with Halinka, a messenger girl, and a German assault is beaten back while Korab is wounded stopping a Goliath tracked mine. Encircled, Zadra is told to take his people out through the sewers toward the Downtown.
Cast
- Teresa Berezowskaas Halinka
- Maria Kretzas Amputee
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Kanal (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Wajda addressed the lack of Soviet support for the Polish AK partisans in the Warsaw Uprising, a topic communist Poland's censors kept out of open discussion; the film shows civilians hiding in the canals awaiting the Red Army as the Russian artillery suddenly falls silent.
- Kanał was the first film ever made about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, following a group of Polish resistance fighters and civilians escaping the Nazi onslaught through the city's sewers.
- The film's story and script were written by Jerzy Stefan Stawiński, who himself survived the sewers as an officer of the Polish resistance Home Army during the 1944 uprising.
- Andrzej Wajda planned a pre-credit sequence referencing Poland's celebrated semi-suicidal cavalry charges, including the legend of the Charge at Krojanty reputedly against German tanks in 1939, but the sequence was abandoned.
